There are many ways to “know” things. Some things we know because they’re a core part of our experience: I know that I exist. I know that pleasure is preferable to pain. I know that Adam Sandler isn’t funny. Other things we know because we've figured them out.
Some great food for thought here. On a side note, I still don't understand who "brown" people are. Is it literally just about what color one's skin is? And thus does "brown" include everyone from Native Americans to Latinos with indigenous blood, Malaysians, Indians, Middle Eastern people, the native tribes of the Amazon, Polynesians, Indonesians, Philippinos, etc. etc.? When they say "black and brown people" I never know who the latter actually are. Is it a coherent group?
"I still don't understand who "brown" people are. Is it literally just about what color one's skin is?"
It's really just another way of saying "people of colour." "Black" people are, of course, brown. But because we're collectively known as "black" for some reason, and because it would be REALLY ridiculous to refer to a Latino or Indian person as "black," we get this term with this strange redundancy.
So yeah, it's as coherent as "people of colour" is. Sometimes useful, sometimes not.
It increases the size of people "oppressed by white people" (non-white) but excludes them from the group of the most oppressed people (black). Not really about color exactly since some people who are considered to be black are lighter skinned than some actually brown skinned people.
There is probably not a generalized affinity between so called black and brown people and it is more about an anti-white political purpose.
"It increases the size of people "oppressed by white people" (non-white) but excludes them from the group of the most oppressed people (black)"
😅Have you been spending too much time on social media again Dave? This term isn't about being "anti-white" or even about affinity, just about talking about people who aren't white. This is occasionally useful in a society that is majority white.
As I said to Clemence, it basically serves the same function as "person of colour." Which isn't anti-white either. Any more than the word "woman" is anti-man or "gay" is anti-straight.
It's honestly such a shame what Medium has turned into. It was always very left-leaning, but it's become a total cesspit of simple-minded, zero-sum takes. As I often say, please remember that the morons don't speak, and never have spoken, for the majority on any social issue.
Indeed. I’ve known several Indians (people from India, not Native Americans) whose skin is much darker than some African-Americans I know. But then they also tend to get classified as a “model minority.”
One of your greatest strengths, Steve, is how effectively you communicate. You say many things I believe, but so much better than I.Thank you for this brilliantly insightful article.
The one point I would I add is that focusing on broader, more inclusive issues enables a bigger coalition. Concentrating on alleviating poverty makes life better for poor people and poor people leading better lives makes life better for everyone else - less crime, less homelessness, less medical expense, less policing and incarceration, etc.
It seems way more politically feasible to get the middle class on board with poverty alleviation policies than with policies that target specific groups of poor people (and inevitably favor non-poor people who can claim membership of those groups).
I believe in focus on the concept of "class" and "race" you would be much more effective if you focused on "culture".
"Culture" influences peoples views of how to interact, how policing should work, and what laws are valid. That's intuitively obvious.
Gays for example always stated that laws against sodomy and gay sex were invalid. More cultures now agree but not all. Gays also have their own culture on how to interact and what policing is relevant (e.g. the gay culture does not have the same issues with rape as str8 culture).
Its easy to see how culture affects peoples view of interaction, policing, and laws. Take Trump and MAGA supporters as an example. Trump has transcended the cultural signficance of whether a "grab em by the pussy" comment is inappropriate. Many also believe the judgement against by Carroll is also invalid. Many have no clue about what the judgement relating to Stormy is. Many don't believe what people did on jan 6 was any different than what happened in BLM marches. I double you can create a "class" or even "racial" story that makes broad sense for the MAGA movement. The only one that makes sense is that people are prioritizing cultural issues (e.g. abortion) over issues they view as now culturally insignificant - e.g. sexual immorality.
If the divided states continues to use race and sexuality as the group identification in the population, it will continue to miss the real point. The country is the most cultural diverse in the world. That cultural diversity stress any "system" that spans cultures. That's what clear happened in the George Floyd case. I doubt most of the Black people in Minneapolis viewed that George Floyd was a problem in the community. He was harmless and in many cases seemed to have been a positive force. He was breaking "laws" but not ones the Black community really cared about as far as I can tell.
The people who viewed him as a problem where not part of the Black community culture. The shop keeper thought he had a counterfeit $20 bill. Where would George Flyod with malice of forethought have acquired a counterfeit $20 bill? The shop keeper was Palestinian. An entirely different culture that likely viewed George Flyod was afflicted with common vices. Not to be trusted.
The bottom line, there is really no way to create a common solution that spans the divided states for problems in policing, schools, etc. Community and specifically communities with common culture are the best place to address these issues.
I don't think most people are confused about whether it's okay for a politician to talk about grabbing women by the pussy. I don't think that millions of Trump voters have decided that this is culturally okay. I just think they've decided that anything THEIR GUY says is okay. If a tape of Biden saying misogynistic things gets released tomorrow, you'd better believe you'll see the full extent of moral outrage you'd expect from these same people.
I always find that "culture" is too slippery a term to apply usefully to most problems. What exactly is "black culture" I'm black, yet I have no idea. I don't think many people could come up with a definition that would be widely agreed on. Even less so for "White culture" or Asian culture." Or even "gay culture." What you almost always end up talking about here is stereotypes. And sure, stereotypes exist because some people fit into them. But many others, don't. You can't really predict anything about a group of black people if you don't know anything about them but their skin tone.
But you can, much more reliably, say that poor people commit more street-level crime. And you can say that even if you don't know anything else about them. Because there's a causative connection between their poverty and the likelihood that they'll commit crime. Now you have a problem you can do something about.
I wonder how much of the color stuff is about thoughts of subcultural behavior, rather than anything inherent to color itself. I say that because in my opinion the foundation of racism is low expectation of individuals based upon membership in a racial group. If you have a low expectation of how a white person will treat you because they are white you are every bit as racist as a white person who would treat you badly because you are not white.
Adding a requirement for power is a disingenuous way of saying, I can't be a racist because I'm not white and don't have power. Does a group of people who are black that beat someone who is white to death have no power? Does the black man who pushes an Asian woman in front of a subway train have no power? There is all kinds of power and sometimes it doesn't just make your life unpleasant, it ends your life. Does a group of white men who kill a black man have power because they are white, or is it the same power of group violence in the other direction. The days of legal lynching is a matter of history.
The "system" is defined by government and it's policies and laws. The fight against that systemic racism in that has largely been won, but keeping the idea of it being alive promotes assumptions that all negative things that happen between the races are due to racism. Then your "lived experience" is that a bad experience is due to racism, even though that might have had nothing to do with it.
I think that I'm some ways, anti-racists are keeping racism alive, but when I've said that I've received a response of, "You can't stop me from calling out white racism that I know about from my lived experience."
That works in more than one direction. Someone said something about the number of friendships I have with people who are black and said, "Give me one good experience with black people, I've never had one!" I consider that to be an impossibility, but people can reach a point where they are blind to good experiences between the races and only remember, and see, the negative ones. Even negative ones that were not about race.
So what are we talking about? I think that it is the racism of monolithic low expectation of people in certain racial groups. People pile all kinds of other stuff on it to justify and deny it about themselves.
Are there blatant racists? You bet, but if you assume that everyone in their racial group is therefore a racist, you are probably a racist.
"If you have a low expectation of how a white person will treat you because they are white you are every bit as racist as a white person who would treat you badly because you are not white."
I just watched an interesting interview between Lester Maddox and Jim Brown from 1970 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAMWsWvcbtg). And every time Brown tries to make a comment about the issues that black people faced in 1970, Maddox, to the jeers of the audience would interrupt him and say, "what about white people?" I think you're making the same mistake he makes.
Black people, can, of course, be racist. White people can be poor. White people can be bullied because of their looks. There is no issue that black people face that white people can't also face. This fact gives me a lot of hope. Because it means we can understand each other if we try. But there ARE issues that black people are more LKELY to face, and face for different reasons.
I'm lucky enough to have absolutely no expectations of how I'll be treated by somebody else because I'm black and they're white or Hispanic or Asian or anything else. I grew up almost exclusively around white people. And whether it was luck or my physical size or my scintillating personality, the colour of my skin was extremely rarely a significant issue. Life taught me, from a very early age, that people were just people. This is also the experience of almost all white people.
But there are some black people who grow up with a very, very different experience (https://x.com/TheConsciousLee/status/1819797250828128300). If you were treated the way this guy is in this video, if this had been a repeated experience in yours or your family's life, do you think you'd maybe grow up with a certain expectation when you interacted with white people? How about if you were one of the millions of people alive today who lived through segregation? Or one their children, and had grown up hearing stories about how it was?
So yes, black people can be racist. But black people didn't invent racism. I'm not condoning or excusing racism, whoever it comes from. But I think the 1:1 equivalence you're drawing is unfair.
I returned from Vietnam in 1970, a 20-year-old Sergeant who could not vote of buy a beer. I was stationed in Albany Georgia for my last year as an active-duty Marine. I remember Lester (Ave Handle) Madox political ads against Jimmy Carter. "Wha Jimma Cattah claims to be a man of the people. He's got slave down thea in Plains on his peanut plantation." He was a read piece of work, Southern politics back in the day.
I understand that some people have more reason to be inclined to racism based upon their personal experience. My point is about the idea that anti-racists put that into the heads of younger people who did not live through the bad old days themselves.
I wrote nothing to indicate a ratio of racism between the races. Given that I believe that monolithic low expectations of individuals because of their "race" is the foundation of racism, I do think that we all need to keep our own house clean. The low expectations can be the result of personal grievance of propaganda. Does having more reason to be racist make it not so bad? You know that I am well aware that you have written numerous articles that address racism from all groups and don't think that.
Perhaps I have just grown weary of the steady evil straight white man drone on Medium. You may be weary of denial that even though things have improved there are still issues that affect black people more than other groups. I think that you know that i don't deny that.
Some great food for thought here. On a side note, I still don't understand who "brown" people are. Is it literally just about what color one's skin is? And thus does "brown" include everyone from Native Americans to Latinos with indigenous blood, Malaysians, Indians, Middle Eastern people, the native tribes of the Amazon, Polynesians, Indonesians, Philippinos, etc. etc.? When they say "black and brown people" I never know who the latter actually are. Is it a coherent group?
"I still don't understand who "brown" people are. Is it literally just about what color one's skin is?"
It's really just another way of saying "people of colour." "Black" people are, of course, brown. But because we're collectively known as "black" for some reason, and because it would be REALLY ridiculous to refer to a Latino or Indian person as "black," we get this term with this strange redundancy.
So yeah, it's as coherent as "people of colour" is. Sometimes useful, sometimes not.
It increases the size of people "oppressed by white people" (non-white) but excludes them from the group of the most oppressed people (black). Not really about color exactly since some people who are considered to be black are lighter skinned than some actually brown skinned people.
There is probably not a generalized affinity between so called black and brown people and it is more about an anti-white political purpose.
"It increases the size of people "oppressed by white people" (non-white) but excludes them from the group of the most oppressed people (black)"
😅Have you been spending too much time on social media again Dave? This term isn't about being "anti-white" or even about affinity, just about talking about people who aren't white. This is occasionally useful in a society that is majority white.
As I said to Clemence, it basically serves the same function as "person of colour." Which isn't anti-white either. Any more than the word "woman" is anti-man or "gay" is anti-straight.
Yes I have. I should probably cancel my Medium account but I do find some of the authors valuable.
It's honestly such a shame what Medium has turned into. It was always very left-leaning, but it's become a total cesspit of simple-minded, zero-sum takes. As I often say, please remember that the morons don't speak, and never have spoken, for the majority on any social issue.
Indeed. I’ve known several Indians (people from India, not Native Americans) whose skin is much darker than some African-Americans I know. But then they also tend to get classified as a “model minority.”
One of your greatest strengths, Steve, is how effectively you communicate. You say many things I believe, but so much better than I.Thank you for this brilliantly insightful article.
Came here to say what Mark C Still said below.
The one point I would I add is that focusing on broader, more inclusive issues enables a bigger coalition. Concentrating on alleviating poverty makes life better for poor people and poor people leading better lives makes life better for everyone else - less crime, less homelessness, less medical expense, less policing and incarceration, etc.
It seems way more politically feasible to get the middle class on board with poverty alleviation policies than with policies that target specific groups of poor people (and inevitably favor non-poor people who can claim membership of those groups).
Completely agreed. I can't understand how this isn't obvious to absolutely everybody.
Very interesting article.
I believe in focus on the concept of "class" and "race" you would be much more effective if you focused on "culture".
"Culture" influences peoples views of how to interact, how policing should work, and what laws are valid. That's intuitively obvious.
Gays for example always stated that laws against sodomy and gay sex were invalid. More cultures now agree but not all. Gays also have their own culture on how to interact and what policing is relevant (e.g. the gay culture does not have the same issues with rape as str8 culture).
Its easy to see how culture affects peoples view of interaction, policing, and laws. Take Trump and MAGA supporters as an example. Trump has transcended the cultural signficance of whether a "grab em by the pussy" comment is inappropriate. Many also believe the judgement against by Carroll is also invalid. Many have no clue about what the judgement relating to Stormy is. Many don't believe what people did on jan 6 was any different than what happened in BLM marches. I double you can create a "class" or even "racial" story that makes broad sense for the MAGA movement. The only one that makes sense is that people are prioritizing cultural issues (e.g. abortion) over issues they view as now culturally insignificant - e.g. sexual immorality.
If the divided states continues to use race and sexuality as the group identification in the population, it will continue to miss the real point. The country is the most cultural diverse in the world. That cultural diversity stress any "system" that spans cultures. That's what clear happened in the George Floyd case. I doubt most of the Black people in Minneapolis viewed that George Floyd was a problem in the community. He was harmless and in many cases seemed to have been a positive force. He was breaking "laws" but not ones the Black community really cared about as far as I can tell.
The people who viewed him as a problem where not part of the Black community culture. The shop keeper thought he had a counterfeit $20 bill. Where would George Flyod with malice of forethought have acquired a counterfeit $20 bill? The shop keeper was Palestinian. An entirely different culture that likely viewed George Flyod was afflicted with common vices. Not to be trusted.
The bottom line, there is really no way to create a common solution that spans the divided states for problems in policing, schools, etc. Community and specifically communities with common culture are the best place to address these issues.
"Trump has transcended the cultural signficance of whether a "grab em by the pussy" comment is inappropriate."
I saw a video recently that makes me doubt this - https://youtu.be/Rh1JfiwmCUM?si=4h8t1xyfNEk1lJyL&t=37
I don't think most people are confused about whether it's okay for a politician to talk about grabbing women by the pussy. I don't think that millions of Trump voters have decided that this is culturally okay. I just think they've decided that anything THEIR GUY says is okay. If a tape of Biden saying misogynistic things gets released tomorrow, you'd better believe you'll see the full extent of moral outrage you'd expect from these same people.
I always find that "culture" is too slippery a term to apply usefully to most problems. What exactly is "black culture" I'm black, yet I have no idea. I don't think many people could come up with a definition that would be widely agreed on. Even less so for "White culture" or Asian culture." Or even "gay culture." What you almost always end up talking about here is stereotypes. And sure, stereotypes exist because some people fit into them. But many others, don't. You can't really predict anything about a group of black people if you don't know anything about them but their skin tone.
But you can, much more reliably, say that poor people commit more street-level crime. And you can say that even if you don't know anything else about them. Because there's a causative connection between their poverty and the likelihood that they'll commit crime. Now you have a problem you can do something about.
I wonder how much of the color stuff is about thoughts of subcultural behavior, rather than anything inherent to color itself. I say that because in my opinion the foundation of racism is low expectation of individuals based upon membership in a racial group. If you have a low expectation of how a white person will treat you because they are white you are every bit as racist as a white person who would treat you badly because you are not white.
Adding a requirement for power is a disingenuous way of saying, I can't be a racist because I'm not white and don't have power. Does a group of people who are black that beat someone who is white to death have no power? Does the black man who pushes an Asian woman in front of a subway train have no power? There is all kinds of power and sometimes it doesn't just make your life unpleasant, it ends your life. Does a group of white men who kill a black man have power because they are white, or is it the same power of group violence in the other direction. The days of legal lynching is a matter of history.
The "system" is defined by government and it's policies and laws. The fight against that systemic racism in that has largely been won, but keeping the idea of it being alive promotes assumptions that all negative things that happen between the races are due to racism. Then your "lived experience" is that a bad experience is due to racism, even though that might have had nothing to do with it.
I think that I'm some ways, anti-racists are keeping racism alive, but when I've said that I've received a response of, "You can't stop me from calling out white racism that I know about from my lived experience."
That works in more than one direction. Someone said something about the number of friendships I have with people who are black and said, "Give me one good experience with black people, I've never had one!" I consider that to be an impossibility, but people can reach a point where they are blind to good experiences between the races and only remember, and see, the negative ones. Even negative ones that were not about race.
So what are we talking about? I think that it is the racism of monolithic low expectation of people in certain racial groups. People pile all kinds of other stuff on it to justify and deny it about themselves.
Are there blatant racists? You bet, but if you assume that everyone in their racial group is therefore a racist, you are probably a racist.
"If you have a low expectation of how a white person will treat you because they are white you are every bit as racist as a white person who would treat you badly because you are not white."
I just watched an interesting interview between Lester Maddox and Jim Brown from 1970 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAMWsWvcbtg). And every time Brown tries to make a comment about the issues that black people faced in 1970, Maddox, to the jeers of the audience would interrupt him and say, "what about white people?" I think you're making the same mistake he makes.
Black people, can, of course, be racist. White people can be poor. White people can be bullied because of their looks. There is no issue that black people face that white people can't also face. This fact gives me a lot of hope. Because it means we can understand each other if we try. But there ARE issues that black people are more LKELY to face, and face for different reasons.
I'm lucky enough to have absolutely no expectations of how I'll be treated by somebody else because I'm black and they're white or Hispanic or Asian or anything else. I grew up almost exclusively around white people. And whether it was luck or my physical size or my scintillating personality, the colour of my skin was extremely rarely a significant issue. Life taught me, from a very early age, that people were just people. This is also the experience of almost all white people.
But there are some black people who grow up with a very, very different experience (https://x.com/TheConsciousLee/status/1819797250828128300). If you were treated the way this guy is in this video, if this had been a repeated experience in yours or your family's life, do you think you'd maybe grow up with a certain expectation when you interacted with white people? How about if you were one of the millions of people alive today who lived through segregation? Or one their children, and had grown up hearing stories about how it was?
So yes, black people can be racist. But black people didn't invent racism. I'm not condoning or excusing racism, whoever it comes from. But I think the 1:1 equivalence you're drawing is unfair.
I returned from Vietnam in 1970, a 20-year-old Sergeant who could not vote of buy a beer. I was stationed in Albany Georgia for my last year as an active-duty Marine. I remember Lester (Ave Handle) Madox political ads against Jimmy Carter. "Wha Jimma Cattah claims to be a man of the people. He's got slave down thea in Plains on his peanut plantation." He was a read piece of work, Southern politics back in the day.
I understand that some people have more reason to be inclined to racism based upon their personal experience. My point is about the idea that anti-racists put that into the heads of younger people who did not live through the bad old days themselves.
I wrote nothing to indicate a ratio of racism between the races. Given that I believe that monolithic low expectations of individuals because of their "race" is the foundation of racism, I do think that we all need to keep our own house clean. The low expectations can be the result of personal grievance of propaganda. Does having more reason to be racist make it not so bad? You know that I am well aware that you have written numerous articles that address racism from all groups and don't think that.
Perhaps I have just grown weary of the steady evil straight white man drone on Medium. You may be weary of denial that even though things have improved there are still issues that affect black people more than other groups. I think that you know that i don't deny that.